Pepys's diary, not perhaps an obvious source of material for accounting historians, provides some interesting information. The diary shows that Pepys kept personal accounts, although unfortunately only a fragment of these has survived. There is some evidence to suggest that these accounts may have been kept, at least partially, on a double-entry basis. The accounts were used to enable Pepys to measure his wealth and to maintain some form of financial control over his affairs. More unusually, the diary provides a glimpse both of Pepys's attitude towards the preparation of his accounts and of the character of a seventeenth-century accountant.